We are often tempted to blame our unpleasant experiences on others. In the event, we need to ask ourselves if we are entirely without fault. Ask God to help us be honest with ourselves, understanding toward others, and courageous in the face of evil.
With the help of my God
I will scale any wall.
In the culture of the psalms—as in the Middle East today—nothing is experienced in moderation. Joy is ecstatic, hatred is implacable, love is deep devotion, betrayal is devastating, insults are laden with invective, friendship—while it lasts—is utterly binding.
Relationship with God is given the same extravagant expression. No statement of faith is sufficient without repeated images to describe and emphasize it. For the psalmist, God is “my stronghold, my crag, and my haven … my shield … my salvation, and my refuge.”
The effects of personal crisis extend far beyond individual experience. Whatever trouble the psalmist has endured assumes cosmic proportions. “Mountains shook … [God] parted the heavens and came down … The beds of the seas were uncovered, and the foundations of the world laid bare.” In all this upheaval the psalmist stands serenely at the centre, utterly sure of his relationship with God.
How are we to identify with this total moral conviction? Should we envy it or be repelled by it? Perhaps there is another possible response. We can note the massive foundation of trust that sustains the faith of the psalmist. Having indulged in our envy, we cannot but long for this kind of certainty ourselves.
We cannot help but long for the ability to say of God, “You are my lamp … you make my darkness bright.” Even to hear the psalmist say, “with the help of my God I will scale any wall,” is to feel one’s own faltering resolve strengthened. When we recognize God as the one “who girds me about with strength … makes me sure-footed like a deer and lets me stand firm on the heights,” we cannot but feel a surge of confidence and energy within ourselves.
Through such ardent expressions of trust, the psalmist is transformed before us into a warrior able to battle any foe. If these same images can make it possible for us too to cope with life, to conquer the enemies both within and beyond ourselves, then this psalm will become grace for us.
Trusting friendships are built in subtle ways, often over long times, and result from deep knowing. How much time do you spend with God? How well do you feel you know God? Consider devoting daily time to being with God and consulting God.
The heavens declare the glory of God …
The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul.
In the desert, the degree to which the sun dictates human activity is a measure of its majesty. One must travel before it rises. One must rest when it blazes down at noon.
“Like a bridegroom out of his chamber,” says the psalmist, his eyes squinting as they turn to the golden line of the eastern horizon. “Like a champion to run its course,” he muses, as the fire of a new day spills above the horizon and pierces his eyes. Later in the day, his body wracked by heat and sweat, he will murmur through parched lips, “Nothing is hidden from its burning heat.”
Now he links the glory of the heavens to the glory of moral law, “the law of the Lord.” Images tumble into his mind. There is a terrible perfection about the law, just as there is about the heavens. To contemplate either “revives the soul.” To contemplate the skies—day or night—is to feel ourselves as children before an inexpressible mystery. A timeless wisdom is given even to a child, as he or she gazes up. So, with the law of God, there comes mystery and wisdom.
The sun brings the gift of daylight, and we once again can see. So the law of the Lord gives clarity in our search for direction. The sun cleans the desert as a furnace removes refuse. So the law of God cleanses the soul, sometimes with a discipline as pitiless as the sun. The psalmist dwells on this. “Cleanse me from my secret faults,” he asks, considering those repressed flaws that not even he is aware of.
So, in the mind of the psalmist, the sun and the heavens become a metaphor for the mystery of God and the demands of God on our humanity. The search for metaphors of God will take each one of us in different directions. For some, it may be the canvasses of great art that trigger insights about God. For others, it may be great music. For still others, it may be a liturgical moment when bread becomes more than bread, and wine more than wine.
All of these, and many other things, are capable of becoming for us what the sun and the heavens are for the psalmist. The nature of the metaphor is not important. What matters is that we develop the ability to think in such a way: to look not merely at the world of daily experience but through it and, looking through it, to see the God who blazes at its centre—its true sun.
The question for each of us can be put in terms of the opening verses of this psalm: What for me declares the glory of God? What for me shows God’s handiwork?
Since all creation finds its source in God, all created things reflect the mind and heart of God. Recall and savour the wonderful things in life that thrill you most. May your love of God’s creation lead you to ever deeper and fuller relationship with God.
Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God.
at first reading, these lines seem almost out of character for the psalmist. The atmosphere is calm. For once, no enemy is at the gates. We have nothing but unqualified approval for another, as if a dear friend or loved one is being addressed. There is not a word of criticism, no fault finding.
Good wishes for the recipient of this psalm follow each other in quick succession. “May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble … Send you help from his holy place … strengthen you.” May God “accept your burnt sacrifice … Grant you your heart’s desire … prosper all your plans.”
Only now (verse 6) do we realize that the psalmist is writing a somewhat political document. This fervent endorsement is for a leader—a king. Presumably there is some threat of trouble, the possibility of attack or invasion. It would seem that the king is preparing to respond. As he does, his loyal subjects—the psalmist among them—dutifully assure themselves and their king that nothing other than victory is possible.
How does a long-ago statement of political loyalty become a resource for our Christian devotions? Perhaps by our first asking ourselves a question. Who for us is king? For a Christian there can be only one reply. Jesus Christ is king. How do we affirm him as king for us? By generously and genuinely offering our worship and praise, and by committing all aspects of our lives that flow naturally from the loyalty we profess.
There is an echo of this psalm in one of the loveliest of all Christian hymns: “My Song Is Love Unknown,” written by Samuel Crossman in the late seventeenth century. “Here might I stay and sing … never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine.” Here is all the same admiration and devotion, but now offered not to an earthly ruler preparing for war, but in gratitude to a king who has won a victory for us at ultimate cost to himself.
Because of our Lord’s victory, we can expect to realize some of our own victories in the ongoing struggle with our human nature.
Consider